Deliverabilty 2009

I recently was able to spend some time with David Fowler, Director of Deliverability at Lyris where I had the opportunity to question him on some of the most common questions and misconceptions about email deliverability.

After my disastrous foray into managing my own IP reputations (see previous blog) I decided to use an ESP that knew the industry and its considerations inside out. That’s how I came across the LyrisHQ platform.

I had known of and wanted to work with Emaillabs (now a Lyris product) for many years, when I needed to transition to a system that I knew would have everything I needed, Emaillabs (Now LyrisHQ) was the obvious choice for me.

NB: In there interest of full disclosure, I have now become an agent for Lyris in the Australian region. I have become an agent because of my bias toward the product. I am not biased toward the product because I am an agent.

Anyway, I digress…

Below is a summary of the most salient points of our conversation with David. It is paraphrased, as my shorthand skills are non-existent. I prepared a number of questions prior to the meeting, many of these questions we thought we knew the answers to. However we wanted to approach the subjects with an empty cup, so to speak.

Are words like Free, Win, Contest a real problem for deliverability or are they just contributing factors in spam weighting systems? Our businesses depend on these words as they accurately describe the nature of the products and/or services we are promoting.

Words like free, cash and so forth are becoming decreasingly relevant for ISP’s in determining whether a piece of content is likely to be unwanted or SPAM. In the case of a contest or free sample site, these words are the most accurate way to describe the content and nature of the offer and therefore represent relevant content.

Content has a bearing but is not the deciding factor on whether you get delivered, junked bounced or filtered but the reputation of your domain , the IP range that you are mailing from and level of engagement of your clients are the biggest contributors to your delivery or lack thereof.

What should we be most concerned with?

The health of your data would be the single biggest contributing factor to the health of your reputation with ISP’s. If you have a huge list of people that you haven’t contacted or have failed in delivering to for 2 years, you will need to devise a strategy for ramping up communication. This strategy may include up front header reminders with an obvious opt out button at the top of your message – at least until you are rid of all the people who don’t want to be there anymore.

Mailing to dead data is not a neutral act. ISPs will build your reputation or downgrade it based on your open and click rates. Mailing to hard bounces repeatedly is murderous for reputation.

Our presumption has always been that reputation ranged from neutral to trash. Are you saying reputation can be built positively based on content, open, click and complaint rate?

Yes

So are you saying that how good our emails look even effect reputations?

One has to assume that, whether it is true or not, a real human being is viewing your content and judging its relevance to the end user and what they have subscribed to.


Is double opt-in necessary? We find that there is a huge number of people who choose to join a list and don’t action the confirmation. We believe they are presuming that they are already members.

It is not totally necessary to go to double opt in. The fact that you have expressed consent to communicate with your end users makes your program way above the standards of many US mailers. Of course, if I am to go in to bat for you with an ISP, the fact that you are double opt-in certainly helps as it’s the highest level of permission and consent a mailer can achieve.

Should my links, reply address, image sources and unsubs all be coming from the same domain?

Ideally yes - these factors all contribute to the perceived quality of your list and content.

After my debacle trying to manage my own IP’s I want a company like Lyris to do the work for me. If I use the product as the image host, reply handling and link tracker am I effectively leaving the deliverability up to Lyris – is there an issue with this?

No actually we recommend that is what you do. If your practices were a concern to us we would let you know. If mailers aren’t playing nice in the shared pool we have to take responsibility for it. It is in our interest to keep the pool clean as our reputation is on the line too.


Since our conversation with David I issued the following instructions to our delivery team…


• Trash serial non responders – defined as people who have subscribed before 14 days ago and have not opened OR clicked any message for 4 months or more

• Host all images in the Lyris site and reference them there.

• Keep the reply to email the default Lyris one (for Lyris client I would advise them against customising tracking links and reply from addresses as this means they are taking on half the reputation responsibility)

• Always use tracking in order that all URL’s are Lyris servers

• Ensure there are not mailings that are all image regardless of whether they come through ok in testing (It needs to be a readable and coherent email with the images suppressed)



• Use pre header text to ensure the crux of the message can be read with the images suppressed


We have seen instant improvements as a result of the above policies – more details when we have enough data to prove the results.